Jonze attended the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California. When he was in junior high in high school (Walt Whitman High School), Jonze spent time at a Bethesda community store, where the former owner Mike Henderson gave him his nickname "Spike Jonze" in reference to Spike Jones.[10] He fronted Club Homeboy, an international BMX club, with Mark "Lew" Lewman and Andy Jenkins, both co-editors of Freestylin' Magazine in the mid- to late 1980s, where Jonze worked as a photographer.[11] The three also created the youth culture magazines Homeboy and Dirt (the latter of which was described as "Sassy Magazine for boys," being published by the same company and distributed in cellophane bags with the landmark magazine for young women).[10]

Jonze has many alter egos, including Richard Koufey (alternately spelled Coufey or Couffe), the leader of the Torrance Community Dance Group, an urban troupe that performs in public spaces. The Koufey persona appeared when Jonze, in character, filmed himself dancing to Fatboy Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank" as it played on a boom box in a public area.[14] Jonze showed the video to Slim, who appears briefly in the video around the 3:57 mark.[15] Jonze then assembled a group of dancers to perform to Slim's "Praise You" outside a Westwood, California movie theater and taped the performance. The resulting clip was a huge success, and "Koufey" and his troupe were invited to New York City to perform the song for the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. The video received awards for Best Direction, Breakthrough, and Best Choreography, which Jonze accepted, still in character. Jonze made a mockumentary about the experience called Torrance Rises.[1]

He has a speaking part along with Dave Eggers in the Beck song "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" from his 2006 album, The Information. He appears in the "Exoskeleton" part.[16]

Since 2007, he has been the creative director at VBS.tv, an online television network supplied by Vice and funded by MTV.[2]

Spike Jonze was part of the Detour-Moleskine project in New York in 2007.[16] The project invites authors to compile and illustrate Moleskine notebooks to provide an intimate insight into the artists' creative process.

In 2008 he co-produced a new video for the Chocolate Skateboards "Easy Steady", direct by Ty Evans and Federico Vitetta in Milan, featuring the song "Felicità" by Bugo.[17]

Jonze directed Where the Wild Things Are,[18] which opened in the United States on October 16, 2009. It was arguably his most anticipated film to date, the product of an almost decade long collaboration with author Maurice Sendak.[19] The film received generally favorable reviews, and appeared on many critics' end-of-the-year top ten lists.[20]

In July 2009, Jonze acquired the rights to make a film adaptation of the Shane Jones novel Light Boxes. However, Jonze, in an interview with Times Online, said that Ray Tintori was no longer a director for that project as expected.[21] In an interview with Interview Magazine in June 2010, Jones said the film option had been dropped.[22]

In 2010, he made a 28-minute short titled Scenes from the Suburbs, inspired by the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs. Scenes from his short were used in the music video to the album's title song, "The Suburbs". A dystopian vision of suburbia in the near-future, the short was co-written by Jonze, Win Butler, and Will Butler. Expanding on the themes of nostalgia, alienation, and childhood, the short premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and saw its online premiere at MUBI on June 27, 2011.[23]

Jonze is good friends with Björk and frequently works with her. He has directed three videos for her and she contributed the theme song for Jonze's Being John Malkovich film.

Jonze's next theatrical project Her was released in late 2013. Her is a science fiction romance film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde, Rooney Mara, and Scarlett Johansson, and is Jonze's first feature-length original screenplay. The film follows a man (Phoenix) who develops a relationship with a seemingly intuitive and humanistic female voice, named "Samantha" (Johansson), produced by an advanced computer operating system.[27] Jonze won the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for Her.[28] Jonze has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Her, as producer for Best Picture, writer for Best Original Screenplay, and lyric writer for Best Original Song. On March 2, 2014, Jonze won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which marks his first win. In 2013, Jonze played a role in The Wolf of Wall Street.[29]

Personal life[edit]

On June 26, 1999, Jonze married director Sofia Coppola, whom he had first met in 1992.[30] On December 5, 2003, the couple filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences."[31] The character of John, a career-driven photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) in Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), was rumored to be based on Jonze, though Coppola has vehemently denied this.[32]

Jonze began dating Michelle Williams in July 2008, after the death of Heath Ledger. They met on the set of Synecdoche, New York, which Williams starred in and Jonze produced. Williams called the timing of their relationship "impossible", and ended it in September 2009.[33]